As it is known, most of currently marketed front-loading laundry washing and/or drying machines comprise: a substantially parallelepiped-shaped, rigid outer boxlike casing structured for resting on the floor; a substantially bell-shaped washing tub which is suspended in floating manner inside the casing, directly facing a laundry loading and unloading through opening realized in the front face of the casing; a substantially cylindrical, elastically-deformable bellows which connects the front opening of the washing tub to the laundry loading and unloading opening formed in the front face of the casing; a porthole door which is hinged to the front face of the casing to rotate to and from a closing position in which the door closes the laundry loading and unloading through opening in the front face of the casing to seal the washing tub; and a substantially cylindrical, bell-shaped revolving drum structured for housing the laundry to be washed and/or dried, and which is housed inside the washing tub in axially rotating manner about its substantially horizontally-oriented longitudinal axis.
In addition to the above, known laundry washing and/or drying machines are typically provided with an electrically-powered motor assembly which is located immediately outside of the washing tub, and which is structured for selectively driving into rotation the revolving drum about its longitudinal axis inside the washing tub; with an outer manually-operated control panel which is usually located on the front face of the casing, immediately above the laundry loading and unloading opening; and with an electronic central control unit which is structured for directly controlling the electric motor of the motor assembly and other electrically-operated component parts of the household appliance, according to the washing and/or drying cycle selected by the user via the control panel.
In most of the currently marketed laundry washing and/or drying machines, the manually-operated control panel comprises: a rigid shell-shaped dashboard which usually forms part of the upper portion of the front face of the outer boxlike casing; an internal printed circuit board which is generally provided with one or more manually-operated rotatable knob selectors and/or buttons and/or switches and/or LED warning lights and/or alphanumeric displays necessary for allowing the user to manually select the desired washing and/or drying cycle among the ones stored in the central control unit; and a substantially basin-shaped, rigid protecting box, which houses and directly supports the printed circuit board, and is structured for being firmly fixed to the back of the dashboard via anchoring screws.
Generally, the outer dashboard, is provided with a number of pass-through openings and/or seats which are spatially arranged and dimensioned for being engaged respectively by a shaft of the rotatable knob selector, and by the other buttons, switches, warning lights and/or alphanumeric displays of the printed circuit board, so that the shaft of the knob selector, and each other button, switch, warning light, and/or alphanumeric display projecting out of the protecting box can fit into a corresponding pass-through opening or seat of the dashboard.
It is preferable that the mounting of the control panel be as easy and fast as possible during manufacturing and maintenance. In particular, when printed circuit board comprises capacitive sensors, the control panel is further provided with a spring detector connected to capacitive sensor provided on the printed circuit board, and pressed with its free end on the internal surface of the outer dashboard. When a finger of the user properly approaches the dashboard near a spring detector and/or touches the dashboard close to a spring detector, resulting capacity changes are processed by the printed circuit board and converted into a command for the laundry appliance. Each spring detector is associated to a capacitive command button and spring detectors shall be properly compressed during mounting for functioning of the capacitive button. Furthermore, each spring detector comprises a floating free end that may hook an adjacent spring detector or be damaged during handling before mounting.
Furthermore, in known laundry appliances (washing machines, washer/driers and driers) the area of the outer dashboard is typically positioned close to a tray or drawer, extractable from the housing of the machine and adapted to be loaded and/or unloaded with liquid/s (detergent/softener/bleach in a washing machine or washer/drier, condensed water in a drier); therefore the outer dashboard may be subject to splashes of water or other liquids, in particular during loading/unloading of the tray/drawer, so that drops may spill by gravity through the dashboard towards the printed circuit board when falling down.